Min. Raising

Min raising in a deep mtt, good idea or bad?

Ive been using it alot lately and its really affective people call in hopes of hitting something, miss, and fold to a c-bet. Also if you get 3-bet its an e-z laydown inless u have a monster.

Im looking for pro's and cons to min. raising.

Depends.

On late stage I use to to do a 2,1 raise.

In early stages big raises.

its pretty much the small ball style of poker.. great for tourneys.. you will get more calls. thus meaing you need to play well psotflop.. otherwise your wasting your time.. sitck to big bet poker as it relies on you making all of your decisions postflop..

I was actually going to make a post about min betting myself but figured I've already reached my quota of fish posts.

Min betting is usually really bad. See the thread in the Golden Archives (in the General Poker folder) called something like "Stop min-raising".
The short version is that you don't have much fold equity and you don't get value so it's a bad move, but the thread is worth reading in full anyway.

What I've been thinking about contributing to the subject is that when you have position you do have fold equity, depending on stack sizes.
Min raises have their place because they are often really hard to play against because opponents can't resteal frequently enough to counter you raising really wide because they win so little when their resteal works. They also can't just call, because that's even worse and they give you too much equity in the pot.

For instance button vs blinds, as long as stacks aren't deep enough that they can proffitably 3bet shove very wide, the open minraise from the button is proffitable with ATC, almost always.

Min raising has it's place, imo.

Min 3betting sometimes too.

/my daily fishy post.

Thanks for input so far. After making this post i started to abuse min. raising and lost the chip lead in a big MTT to get knocked out in 10th place. I have to agree inless your on the button its definately not worth it. Guys call you with garbage because they have good pot odds.

However if you have alot of shortstackers left to act after you a min-raise is good in too ways. They cant just call and if they shove you can fold without losing to much.




I never use this as i see it villain can call with ATC and have the right odds to hit his long shot.

Any other opionions?

It needs to be very very situation specefic to be +ev in the ong run, imo. It has to be a situation where your min raise looks like the nuts looking for just a little more value. Your previous play and bet sizes also come into play, in my mind on how the min raise is perceived.

The key point is that the caller is OOP, them calling a min-3bet is similar to completing the SB. They are getting pot odds but their reverse implied odds are so bad that calling wide is worse than folding. Also them drawing to a long shot is good, since this raise size is not primarily for value (which means our range is wide/weak) and we're going to pick up a lot of pots on the flop, if he's set mining or something.

Just another perspective: Stop minraising

thank you.

Thats a good thread.

There are often spots in tournaments where min-raising is a good idea. Poker players have a weird aversion to min-raising.

1. If the blinds are tight and stack sizes are awkward, there's no reason to risk more than that.

2. If the blinds are loose and you have a monster hand, you have position and presumably can outplay them after the flop, minraising gives you more room to maneuver.

It's actually the opposite. If they're loose, there's no reason not to raise bigger for value and when you have the best hand "outplaying" is simply getting value which means playing a bigger pot.

If your range is actually stronger than theirs (and LP vs blinds, it shouldn't be) a bigger raise size is better.

well, it depends...if they have 8 BBs are they calling off 30% of their stack with JTs? probably not...but a minraise will get them to look at the flop a lot.

Min raising is probably the worst thing you can do to yourself.

It just doesn't put enough pressure on opponents and it prices everyone in.

It's not smart - just make a normal raise.

It all depends. If the blinds are big enough and the players are tight enough, then a min raise could be as effective as a 3x raise. There is no need to risk 3x or 4x if your opponents are only going to call you with a very tight range. Personally I like 2.5x as it puts a little bit more pressure than the 2x (and psychologically opponents don't think its a min-raise) but still saves me a little bit when some decides to come over the top.

Also keeping the pots smaller at late stages of tournaments is advantageous as your opponents aren't as likely to bluff in them.

You dont play small raise in MTT..... many players can calling. In early studies of MTT you must play fold or raise 4-5 BB

Yea, I mean sure if there are 4 players left and the blinds are huge and everyone is tight as hell trying to get more money - but when the blinds are small compared to your stack and your on a full table, a min raise is terrible.

Post flop I find the occasional relatively quick min raise to mix things up works well - opponents generally read it as weakness, especially in HU, allowing me to push over the top or bet hard on the next street, and either gaining extra chips or making them pot committed when they weren't before.

Min raising is good in tournaments near the bubble. When medium stack has 12-15 blinds it is an hard decision to pay that blind because u never know if the opponent is bluffing or just trying to squeeze some more chips from you and it is hard to pay or reraise when you miss the flop. I met both situations in an equal way and learned my lesson . I never pay and never reraise if i miss the flop near the bubble and i do not have chips to play smart. In any other situation i reraise or simply fold if my hand is not completed. If i am sure i have the best hand than i play dependig on the reads i have on my opponent. Slowplay sometimes when he is tight and reraise if he is a calling station.

Can't post a reply to that thread not entirely sure why so I'll say here that's pretty much just plain wrong. There are plenty of extremely successful players who exclusively minraise preflop and saying your raise has to be for one of three specific reasons, also lol at one being "for information", and basically ignoring the part about setting up deeper stack sizes and more FE postflop just seems like he really doesn't know what he's talking about no offense meant. If people are going to make the mistake of calling too many raises preflop then of course 3-4bb is better because you maximize their mistakes but especially against better players minraising puts them in spots that they may not be familiar with and also forces them to either allow you to bluff cheaper or to play more pots with weaker holdings which if they're not used to will also favor you. It's a lot more common to see people minraising buttons but as I said earlier there are some people that minraise from all positions and some of these people are people who are crushing high-stakes.

I like min raising in later stages of small stakes tournaments when average stack is under thirty bbs. This move seems to be less effective in larger buy ins as more experienced players will call because of pot odds with any two cards once the antes have started

So we are min raising to make the other players call, why don't we then just call, so the bb wil call too.

I think we do raise to get informations, which means a larger raise means opponets will hold better hands, IF they wants to enter the pot. It also signals that we do have a strong hand. So the raising depends very much on what we want to achieve, and which impression we want to give our opponets.

The question must be if we want to steal the blinds will min raising work ?
if we hold a big pair do we want a lot of drawing hands in the pot ?

I know min. raising might be good for 1 thing thou, get a lot of people into the pot the pot will be big, then fold and let the other players battle it out, hoping that some of them will get knocked out of the tournament.

I know min. raising might be good for 1 thing thou, get a lot of people into the pot the pot will be big, then fold and let the other players battle it out, hoping that some of them will get knocked out of the tournament. [/quote]

This is funny here. Hope people get knocked out of tourney. If you are on the table with me and I minimum raise , be scared. I have a monster and probably should have checked. One thing I like about minimum raisers is the free cards. I love to see cheap cards to try to hit my draw. I am also apt to re-raise with air against someone who is doing a lot of minimum raising. Put the pressure back on them and find out where you stand. If they re-raise again they have a hand. Usually minimum raisers fold to a big re-raise.